Pet Jewelry! YES, Pet Jewelry!

Still flush with my apparent ability to break the law with the sale of my bear bottles, Mojo pushes the envelope of legality yet again with this little number! What! a shocked nation exclaims. Who shall our children look up to as a role model if Mojo turns to a Life of Crime? Rest assured, gentle Craptacular reader, that Mojo does not make a habit of trading in illegal goods and services. But the story behind this was Craptacular enough that Mojo is willing--this ONE time--to overlook some of those pesky moral questions in her quest to entertain the masses. That's you. So if I wind up in jail, clearly it's ALL YOUR FAULT.

You see, occasionally Mojo is forced to correspond with other beings on this planet. Sometimes they are from fans thanking her for the special personal joy they find in the Craptacular. Sometimes they are from people who Just Don't Get It and can be boiled down to one word: "Huh?" Sometimes they are from people asking questions from the blog, like "Why did you attempt to pick up a flying squirrel when you were naked?" And sometimes they are from people trying to donate crap to sell on the Craptacular.

These donation letters Mojo probably enjoys the most, because she has discovered a whole world of people out there with even more pitiful stories of woe than Mojo's own dull life. Because Mojo's life really is dull, flying squirrels aside. And even as she may relate stories about her brushes with the law or her brushes with unwanted rodents in her house, these are the exceptions and not the rule. Mojo leads a dull life because Mojo LIKES a dull life, and is not fond of surprises like people dropping by totally unannounced or letters from the government threatening her with jail. Mojo does NOT like soap operas, whether on TV or in Real Life, so she tries really hard to avoid them in her own life.

Other people, apparently, are less discriminating, or at least associate with folks who are less discriminating. And since Mojo does not have to suffer the consequences of these people's actions, she can sometimes enjoy the vicarious thrill of someone else's brush with illegality. Here—allow me to quote from the email verbatim:

"This may be the MOST craptacular item ever. Not only is the item craptacular in and of itself, but it has an illicit background! Yes, I’m talking about the infamous Pet Jewelry!!!"

(Well, Mojo is understandably skeptical, since she is certain some of her own stuff ranks right up there on the rankness scale. But the very idea of combining the word "Pet" with the word "Jewelry" compels me to read on.)

"Many years ago, I was working in Times Square and I ran out on my lunch hour to purchase some stuff at (name of pet store deleted to protect the guilty, although if the authorities contact me rest assured I will sing like the gutless canary I am). I seem to recall that I might have been buying a bunch of stuff to decorate my anole's cage, so that our poor lizard would feel loved and wanted, and forget about the fact that my husband had been trying to feed him to the Tarantula when I rescued him and made him a pet rather than food. I had all sorts of fake climbing vines and plants to make his little aquarium a lush jungle lizard paradise."

(Hmmm. Mojo likes this person already. Their pets include lizards and tarantulas, so Mojo knows this person must share Mojo's Boundless Love for All of God's Creatures and is not one of those fair-weather "only if they're fluffy and cute" animal lovers. But I digress.)

"When I got up to the counter, the sullen clerk bagged everything for me, and then handed me the bag just as I was supposed to tender money. I shifted it around so that I could get out my bank card, and in doing so, I bumped into a dusty wire rack right next to the counter. I swore I saw something drop to the ground, but though I looked everywhere (and believe me, with Mr. Sullen on the register, I had plenty of time for the search), I couldn’t find a thing. Not a thing!

"Well, when I got back to the office, and happened to look into the bag (I suspect I may have been showing the girls in the office all the wonderful things I’d gotten for my brand new lizard-y pet), lo and behold, there was one additional item...

"Pet Jewelry.

"Yes, I had inadvertantly shoplifted the most craptacular product ever. It’s so bad that they can’t even get more than one photo of animals WEARING the jewelry. They had to resort to line drawings, which are surprisingly smooth considering they had probably just been mauled by the poor cat photographed for the main picture. I’m sure you will have a field day commenting on the lovely design (the flower looks SO lifelike!!!), but make sure you note the security swatch on the back, which DID NOT go off when I was walking out the door with the product."

Clearly this person is telling the truth and the shoplifting was inadventant. How does Mojo know this? Can Mojo divine what is hidden inside the hearts of her correspondents? Well, maybe not, but since Mojo is a fan of cold hard logic she believes that, if someone were to shoplift something ON PURPOSE in an attempt to enrich one's present life (even at the expense of one's karmic destiny or entry into heaven), someone smart enough to read the Craptacular all the way through would at LEAST shoplift something of good taste and/or extremely high resale value. Plastic Pet Jewelry fits neither of these criteria.

Indeed, leading the sheltered, dull life in the sticks that Mojo leads, she was blissfully unaware of the existence of Pet Jewelry until this box arrived on her doorstep and her quiet non-bejeweled-pet life ended as she knew it. The package says it is "Fun To Wear", but Mojo does not see how that can possibly be. Mojo has known many pets in her checkered life, pets of all stripes and all persuasions, and if there is One Thing to generalize about all of these animals it is this: they do no enjoy playing "dress-up". And they especially do not seem to enjoy having things clipped to their ears. Mojo is not above doing cruel tormenting things to her pets (so long as they are not physically hurt), and I could see PERHAPS MAYBE clipping this on my cat's ear just to annoy the stuffing out of him. But I'm sure he would be throwing conniptions so badly the guilt would kick in in a matter of seconds. (Mojo only torments if she thinks it will be funny, and an angry cat tearing around the room knocking stuff off the walls ceases to be funny rather quickly.)

And far be it for Mojo to ask why her correspondent did not return this lovely item, or at least throw it out right away. Mojo prefers to leave these questions for fear that certain wags will begin talking about pots and kettles and Mojo's own apparent inability to throw things out even though they are utterly of no use to her. Clearly, judging from the yellowing of the plastic bubble and how mangled and beat up it is, this package is very old. Which means this person not only shoplifted this useless, craptacular object, but she then hung on to it for "many years". (And some suspect Mojo is a loser....)

As always you get the Certificate of Craptacularity to go along with your Pet Jewelry, so you can fold your poor animal a nice hat and totally destroy what little self-esteem he or she has left. Wow. This is craptacular on so many levels it leaves even me breathless. (But maybe that's because my life is so dull.) Crappy gift, crappy story, illicit goods, and the potential of tormenting some poor innocent animal until he or she runs under the sofa and won't come out for three days. C'mon, admit it...your heart is saying, "I must bid!" And your wallet is saying, "Why, just think of the pet food you'll save while Fluffy is sulking under the couch...."